FACESAY™ SOCIAL SKILLS SOFTWARE GAMES - Blog

Touch screen laptops

Fri, 13 Dec 2013 22:09:27 GMT

One of my working hypotheses is that using a touch screen provides a boost for the kids, particularly for the joint attention game, Amazing Gazing, where you point to where the person is looking. We haven't analyzed this formally, and there are other contributing factors, but we did see better results in the study that used a touch screen.

Buying a touch screen laptop or good tablet can run 400 to 500 dollars, so I was happy to stumble upon an HP touch screen laptop in the 300 dollar range. I was out on a "Dad, can you get me a compass for geometry class" errand :-) at OfficeMax, saw this laptop, got it and tested it with FaceSay. It runs well. The one I picked is only an 11" screen, so it's a little small, but not a bad trade-off for the price. If I get time over the holidays, I may tweak the screen layout of FaceSay - maybe offering an option to reduce the size of the bottom blue section and enlarge the main area - to make better use of the tablet style screen dimensions.

A google at OfficeMax for "touch screen laptop" this morning to confirm that the deal is still available turned up a handful of other deals, including one for under 300 from Dell. I haven't investigated any of these in any depth, and there may be better deals at Costco, etc. I just wanted to give a heads-up on encouraging price news. This could be a long term trend, since tablets are putting pressure on laptops, both in terms of pricing and user experience.

Happy Holidays!

Casey

p.s. I don't own stock in or work for OfficeMax :-).

Impressive number of "Social Attention" studies at IMFAR

Mon, 16 May 2011 22:25:15 GMT

It seemed that one quarter, probably more, of the hundreds of studies presented at IMFAR this year touched on Social Attention and Social Skills and Behaviors. There were rows of posters on studies that measured Joint Attention, Emotion Recognition, Face Recognition, or more generally Face Processing and Visual Perception (browse the 700 page IMFAR Abstracts ), often in connection with measures of Social Interactions or Social Competence. It was very interesting and a great fit with FaceSay's focus on attention to the face and particularly the area around the eyes.

Presenting Results of 2010 FaceSay RCT at IMFAR in May

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:18:41 GMT

As part of the Technology Demo at IMFAR in May, I'll be presenting "Results of An RCT of FaceSay In Public Elementary Schools", Friday 8am-1pm, poster #19 in the Elizabeth room. If you are here, please come buy for a demo.

Alex from Wrong planet is here again this year. Tons of great posters on visual attention to Faces, Social Skills interventions, outcome measures. Pretty amazing.

FaceSay Poster Presentation at IMFAR 2010

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:28:14 GMT

I'll be demoing FaceSay and presenting the results from the 2007 FaceSay RCT at IMFAR 2010 in Philadelphia, as part of the Innovative Technologies Demo session, sponsored by Autism Speaks. Philadelphia Marriott, in Franklin Hall B Level 4, Friday, May 21, 2010, 8:00AM

Three Free ReacTickles™ with FaceSay

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:31:22 GMT

With FaceSay version 1.2.1.9, three fun ReacTickles are now included. After every 10 points, the students can choose which ReacTickle (formerly known as reactivecolours) to play. The ReacTickles are also installed as a free screen saver.

ReacTickles by Cardiff School of Art and Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Reading Emotions Might Improve Imitation

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:43:54 GMT

In an interesting 2008 study, Vivanti and Rogers ruled out both motor impairment and following the task as reasons why children with autism have difficulty in an imitation task. One finding that could be important is that the study participants with autism spent less time looking at the face. This leads to the interesting idea that learning to better read emotions, an important component of social interactions, might also improve imitation, which is another key component of social interactions:

“It could be that if people with autism could be better at reading emotion they might naturally start to imitate their models the way like other people do.”
—Sally Rogers, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences

Measuring Attention to Eyes in Naturalistic Interactions

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:17:22 GMT

We can now quantitatively test our hypothesis that FaceSay increases attention to the area around the eyes in interactions with other people! After months of pilot testing, Researchers at the University of Alabama, Birmingham recently placed an order for a an eye tracking system that is ideal for unobtrusively measuring where the study participant is looking when interacting with another person. Attention to the eyes - which does not necessarily equate to eye contact - is thought to be important for reading emotions and possibly imitation, both of which are key components of social interactions.

FaceSay Poster Presentation at IMFAR in Chicago

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:14:54 GMT

I will be presenting a technology demo/poster presentation at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Chicago in May. "FaceSay - Social Skills Games That Work" is scheduled for Friday, May 8, 2009, 9:00 AM
At the Chicago Hilton, in the Boulevard room.

FaceSay Multi Baseline Study at ABA International Conference in May

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:34:11 GMT

Undergraduate student Amy Schrembs and her supervisor, professor Rodney D. Clark, from Allegheny College will present a poster on her interesting multiple-baseline study of FaceSay , An Application of Computer-Based Training on Emotion Discrimination in Children with Autism: A Comparison to Non Computer-Based Training, at the ABA International conference in Phoenix, AZ, May 22-26th. Congratulations, Amy!

If you are an undergrad, grad or PhD student interested in studying FaceSay. I'd be happy to provide a free license for the study. Contact me for details.

Casey

Transporters Study is Encouraging, but Still No Benefit in Everyday Life

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:49:00 GMT

Simon Baron-Cohen's talented team announced results from a 20 student study of Transporter's, a neat DVD aimed at teaching kids emotions.

The good news is that the autistic children were able to match the game performance of neurotypical students after just a few weeks. Unfortunately, as with the earlier 6 student study of transporters, and with all other studies I've seen except for FaceSay, there was no measured benefit to everyday life, where it counts.

As Baron-Cohen cautions in the press release ...
"...while autistic children might be able to recognize emotions better after watching the DVD, that would not necessarily change their behavior at home or on the playground."

Unlike the FaceSay study , where parents reported students' behavior improved at home (see slide 12), and blinded grad students measured improved behavior with other students on the playground - e.g. increased eye contact, more initiation of social interactions, and fewer negative behaviors (see slide 13) - this Transporters study showed improved performance only with animated characters in the game:

"Close generalisation of skills - children were asked to match animated familiar Transporters faces to situations they had not seen before. Distant generalisation to real [animated] human faces - children were asked to match animated unfamiliar faces to unfamiliar situations. "